The Story of Lil' Brad: Finding the Right Dummy

Our CEO was an All-American looking blonde-hair-going-gray, blue-eyed, very fit man in his middle years. (Note: I am only referring to the CEO in the past tense to indicate Lil' Brad's past - Brad the real-life CEO is very much alive as of this writing.)

As I looked at dummies on the various websites, I didn't see any that had the right look.  The entry level (<$100) pull-string dummies were generally dark-haired with dark eyes (e.g., Charlie McCarthy, Danny O'Day, Jerry Mahoney [why are they all Irish? another topic perhaps] ).  
Even at the higher price point of semi-pro dummies that had a control stick for the mouth and head movements, I did not see any blonde dummies. 
[I believe the tendency toward dummies with dark hair and eyes is due to the most popular and enduring characters from the Golden Era 1930s, 40s and 50s having those kind of features. Light-colored hair and eyes would probably would not have shown up very well under the bright lights and camera technology of the time, especially during the black-and-white era.]

You may be saying to  yourself at this point "why didn't he just plan on painting a dummy with the hair and eye color he wanted?"  The answer is I am lazy.  I did not want to work that hard at something that was meant to be a short-lived joke at work.  I wanted something as close to "plug and play" as possible.

So I started Googling "blonde ventriloquist dummy" in various forms, and eventually discovered one blonde entry-level dummy that was marketed in Canada in the 1970s: Tommy Talker.

This is what a typical Tommy Talker looked like:

Blonde hair, blue eyes, and you gotta love that 1970s jumpsuit, lol.  I found a nice condition Tommy Talker on eBay that looked very similar to the picture above.  I failed to pull the trigger fast enough on that auction, and then weeks went by without another showing up.  They are somewhat rare here in the US - I've only seen a few come up for sale on eBay in the last year or so.

Finally another one showed up, mislabeled and dressed as a Charlie McCarthy, and looking kinda grimy:

[A lot of the toy ventriloquist dummies you see on eBay have their mouths hanging open because the rubber band that pulls the mouth shut is broken - my Tommy was no exception.]

He was grouped in a lot of 4 with some other dummies I had no interest in, so I messaged the seller and she agreed to sell him to me a la carte.

I could hardly wait until he arrived.  I was a bit disappointed when he showed up looking like Malibu Ken after a lost weekend in Vegas, more dirty and disheveled than he looked on the website pics:

His face and hands were grubby, his hair and eyebrows partially rubbed off, his clothing stained and ill-fitting -no way this bum was going to lead a Fortune 500 company.  

Lil' Brad needed a makeover, stat! (and maybe some detox 😐)

Next... Rebuilding Brad